


Seed-quel

by BrandyFromTheBottle



Series: Ford's Nut AU [2]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, M/M, Masturbation, NSFW, SCIENCE IT IS FOR SCIENCE, Stancest - Freeform, a smol pine cone in a big world, do you ever get turned on by your own art me neither, ford is a fucking trash fire dirt ball and needs help, implied tree fucking, pine cone!stan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 11:58:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15170264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrandyFromTheBottle/pseuds/BrandyFromTheBottle
Summary: Ford thinks about the magic tree and is still Not Lonely. (And maybe he makes a new friend.)





	Seed-quel

The walk to the house is uncomfortable, to say the least with his own release cooling and crusting on his dick and boxers. To distract himself from the discomfort of his body and the disquiet of his mind Ford pulls out his journal, the second of the red books adorned with the gold silhouette of his own six-fingered hand. It had seemed, in the moment of its creation, a clever way to distinguish his journals from any other mundane book and it still does fill him with satisfaction to see something that plagued his youth as shameful molded to declare his singular uniqueness, to mark his creations and thoughts. 

He opens the journal to the page he had dedicated to his investigation of the tree, savoring the smoothness of each leaf, admiring his own writings and illustrations, pride welling him at his accomplishments. 

The page is sparse, of course, but the blank space is exciting in its potential as Ford regards it, imagining what he will write, before carefully writing the name of the anomaly at the top of the page: “Wishing Tree" seems apt and suitably descriptive if brief. 

“Though in appearance innocuous, seemingly identical to a standard pine tree, possibly pinus ponderosa, the Wishing Tree had accrued a reputation as capable of fulfilling the desires of supplicants though the method is contested. The location of the tree is also debated; the instructions from the Gravity Falls residents varied and vague at best despite the impressive size of the tree as it is said to tower above the crown of the forest.” 

Ford pauses in his writing to shake out his hand, cramping as he focuses on keeping it steady. He glances around himself, realizing that without the steady chatter of a companion, Ford has been walking without direction. Usually, Fiddleford would cluck and chide as Ford wrote feverishly to record his findings while the details were fresh in his mind. Ford feels a creeping nervousness as he looks around himself, seeking any familiar landmark or trail to orient himself but finds only the vastness of the forest, the pale light that breaks through the canopy to dapple the ground carpeted with red, brown, and yellow leaves left over from last fall, the stray wildflower that bathes in the humble spotlights. (He spots a shrieking violet and notes to avoid that path and that decides to walk in the opposite direction if only to avoid the tinnitus.)

Ford regretfully tucks his journal into his overcoat’s inner pocket and as he becomes more aware of his surroundings, the physical world instead of the intricate mosaic of his mind, he realizes he is sweating. His overcoat, while perfect with its numerous pockets, was poor attire for these summer excursions as Fiddleford so often reminded him. Ford misses his assistant, considers the various moments a companion would have been appreciated in this exploration. 

Perhaps he should get a dog, or ask that Shmebulock accompany him. The gnome had limited speech but would be capable enough as a guide, though Ford can admit that he was not the best caregiver. He could barely keep a cactus alive in college, it only survived by Fiddleford’s intervention (and the invention of the automated care system). 

Ford realizes once again that he had been walking while distracted, considers his surroundings and feeling that creeping anxiety trickle away as he notes a familiar rock with a striking resemblance to a face and estimates that he is twenty minutes away from the house. 

The trek takes closer to thirty minutes as he begins to feel lightheaded and is forced to stop and shrug off his overcoat, his white button-down stuck to his skin with sweat and nearly translucent. As he folds the coat over his arm the green pine cone falls to the forest floor with a muted thump, rocking briefly before stilling. Ford again considers leaving it, wonders if another wishing tree would grow but the desire to study it overrides that curiosity. He could try to grow the tree in his lab, after all. Pine cones contained many seeds so he could dissect and study the thing and still have plenty of supplies to experiment with. 

With that thought, Ford retrieves the pine cone though finds it distinctly harder than before as if it has drawn itself more closed. Ford frowns, studies the cone as his feet carry him toward the house, runs his fingers over the rough, green scales, experimentally prying at the space between them with a nail. The scales don't budge and Ford shrugs, notes the banality of the cone as he places it back into his jacket.

He is shocked at the coolness of his house, his sweat quickly becoming almost frigid on his heated skin. He pulls at the fabric with disgust and decides that between dried ejaculate and the wet shirt that it would behoove him to shower, at least, before he began to record his findings in earnest. 

He tosses his jacket over a skeleton that served as a coat rack, nearly leaves before he remembers his samples. He pulls those out, the needles and the scale, along with his journal to be put aside later. The pine cone once again slips from a pocket and bounces on the hardwood with a loud clack. Ford glares at it, really the thing is a nuisance. Still, he picks it up, noting that the scales have inexplicably relaxed. This is Gravity Falls so it isn’t so strange and it’s just as reasonable that the cone has been reacting to the change in temperature. Still, Ford squints at the pine cone and once again runs a nail over a gap in the scales but he once again is unable to move anything as if he is holding a stone carving. 

Ford leaves his findings and his journal in the kitchen makes careful note of their location as the kitchen has become an organized mess of samples, journals, notes, and the odd plate. (Between Fiddleford and himself neither of them can seem to keep any surface clean and neat.) He worries a moment that the troublesome pine cone will roll away into obscurity to languish unstudied between an old sock and a crumpled schematic. Luckily, there is a mug of old coffee acting as a paperweight for one of Fiddleford’s whimsical robots. Ford picks his way to the sink to dump the coffee, rinse the mug, and secure the pine cone. Ford leaves the mug and the cone with the rest of the materials relevant to the wishing tree. 

The soiled state of his clothing becomes more apparent as Ford strips it away, the drying sweat, the crusting ejaculate, and the tacky remnants of the tree’s sap. Ford carefully puts his boxers to the side, he will try to recover a sample, though small, of the sap later. (And Ford is surprised by how little he feels about the encounter in the forest; that he feels no different than if he had seen a particularly interesting squirrel.) 

Ford isn’t fond of bathing, which any of his roommates could attest too (and that’s really only Fiddleford, Ford realizes and frowns). He was used to the feeling of ocean brine clinging to his skin long after he has shaken the sand out of his shoes; there had always been a comfort of taking the ocean with him, of taking a deep breath and thinking of adventure and freedom when the oppression of Glass Shards Beach became suffocating. 

There is no ocean on Ford’s skin, just body fluids. He scrubs them away with the soap his mother sent him in her last care package. It’s cheap and leaves his skin feeling tight and dry but he has no time to buy his own, he doesn’t actually remember the last time he bought any domestic necessities. (It would be nice to have someone to do that for him, someone who would remember to make Ford take care of himself.)

Ford turns the water off, dries himself roughly, and realizes he has no clean clothing in the bathroom. In fact, his entire wardrobe is worryingly sparse, the cleanest of his shirts is crumpled under his pillow and smells faintly of mothballs. Ford scowls, fastens the towel around his waist and gathers up a haphazard pile of laundry, stomping his way to the machine and swearing loudly when he finds that it has been stripped for parts. Exasperated, Ford drops the laundry and decides that the weather is warm enough that Ford can get away with a towel. 

Morose and irritated, Ford snatches his most recently soiled boxers and mutters darkly as he makes his way to the kitchen to collect his samples and finally sit down to lose himself in the soothing mysteries of Gravity Falls.

His bagged samples are exactly where he left them, pinned slightly under his journal. The mug, however, has tipped. Ford follows a trail of droplets to the pine cone, which has rolled nearly to the edge of the table. Ford stares at the cone, at the thin red-brown that has begun to run along the thin crevices between each green scale and if Ford were less irritated he might admit that the tessellated diamonds were charming in their own way, reminiscent of a Fabergé egg. Instead, Ford picks up the cone to glare at it more closely. 

In the short amount of time he spent showering the cone has seemed to open even further. Ford briefly wonders if the pine cone is dying, feels something like panic that he refuses to call such. He pushes a space clear on the table, decides that he will begin his sketching here. 

He props the pine cone against the mug and begins to trace the contours of the scales, lightly shades their depths and as he stares at the cone he feels his irritation disperse, smokelike. In its place is a kind of calm similar to the effect of the wishing tree so Ford is not surprised to find himself gently stroking the rigid bumps and sighing. 

He should call his mother, Ford thinks, as the calm brings with it a reflective melancholy. He cradles the pine cone in his cupped hands, rubbing one thumb over its surface back and forth and listening to the rhythmic rasps he makes. He’s once again not sure what he is missing but he feels that he is missing something and in juvenile regression he is drawn home, to ask his mother as he did when he was young and lost his books or shoes, to find whatever it is he is looking for. He knows, of course, he’s being foolish, that there is nothing for him at Glass Shards Beach. His future is here, in this strange town and stranger forest; this is where the rest of his life will happen but instead of the deep satisfaction of belonging that he has found in Gravity Falls he feels a mounting loneliness. 

Eventually, Fiddleford will leave him, or at least, he will become less and less available and Ford will need to find another assistant. The thought makes him feel suddenly as if he is eighteen and going to a college across the country with no friends or family and surrounded by a student population with more money in their pockets than Ford has ever seen in his lifetime. It was by benevolent chance that Ford was assigned Fiddleford as his roommate and it was only by that connection that their friendship had formed.

If Fiddleford leaves then Ford will not just be without an assistant but a friend.

The easy path of Ford’s thumb is interrupted by a scale that has darkened and risen without Ford noticing. Ford blinks and focuses again on the cone. It has become significantly darker and drier, the scales just starting to separate and open. Ford feels an irrational, muted terror because this small, annoying pine cone is dying, has shriveled under his nose. He springs to his feet, throws the cone into the coffee mug and shoves it under the faucet of the sink, water splashing onto his naked chest, his glasses, and out of the mug so that when Ford shuts off the water the mug is only full by a centimeter. Ford stares at the pine cone, hoping that whatever latent magic it might have through its connection to the wishing tree will revive it but after a minute the only notable change is the subtle, barely-there scent of pine. Ford slumps against the counter, continuing to stare into the mug, at the pine cone rolling just slightly from one side to the other. Ford sighs and places the mug on the windowsill, scrubs his face and takes a seat at the table again.

He sketches the needles and the scale, every crack and crevice in the tree he remembers. Flushing, he recalls the vulva-like formation on the tree and sketches that out as well, bashful at first but as he begins to shade and detail he can almost feel the roughness of the bark under his fingers, the thrilling drag and catch on his fingers as he pressed against the knot at its pinnacle. It feels like a lifetime ago he was kneeling at the foot of the ancient pine, the cushion of the pine needles beneath his knees. He carefully lines the shadows of the dripping sap-like fluid the tree had leaked, that he had lapped away. 

Ford feels his eyelids droop, a warmth gathers in his cheeks and sets his heart to stutter playfully in his chest. He feels warmth pulse beneath his skin but still, his nipples harden and erect lewdly. The hand that had steadied the journal’s page brushes over his chest and he shivers. He’s surprised that he is becoming aroused; he has never found sketching his subjects titillating nor has his libido been this persistent since he first went through puberty when his hormones had been more than his body could handle. 

He groans in frustration, brings his hand back to the table and abandons the sketch of the tree to record his experience instead. That, too, is stimulating as he recalls the strange warmth of the tree beneath his hands, his head, around his dick. The slickness that had been subtle and sweet in flavor and feeling; the phloem that had been just yielding enough under his tongue to be a teasing challenge and the unmovable hardness of the deeper sapwood that gently reminded him that this ancient tree was as movable to him as a mountain to a mole. 

Ford groans again as blood begins to pool between his legs for the second time that day in no less than two hours. He is not familiar with this heightened sexuality and finds it annoying but the pressure is insistent and his hum of discontent as he adjusts himself in his seat sounds embarrassingly needy. 

He tries to ignore it, decides that he will record the least salacious encounters with the wishing tree but even though his writing is nearly as dry as the pages beneath his hands he still feels the growing, familiar ache. 

Defeated, he closes his journal and presses a palm against the erection that tents his towel. (He is bitterly grateful he hadn't tried to dress in any of his cleaner clothes given that he would have quickly soiled them.) It’s a much feeling and today has been full of much feelings. He is not fond of them. Still, he pulls aside his towel and decides to get this over as quickly as he can, and regards his erect dick with a kind of detached perplexity. 

Arousal is involuntary in many aspects, Ford knows this, and so it is almost like observing a separate being as his body responds to stimuli Ford did not consciously generate. It had been frightening as a child, mastering his emotions, his mind, but losing control of his body. He had been assured countless times that sexuality was normal, a milestone for all children, especially for young boys. But it was unnerving, stomach always churning before he understood it as the biological imperative that it was.

Now, it is an annoyance that he hopes to quench as soon as he can as he wraps a hand around his length and tugs the way he always does, quickly and roughly to get this over with. It isn’t pleasant, not really, but it is stimulating and that is all he needs to get back to his work. Indulgently he swipes his thumb over the head of his dick, curiously testing the wetness there and he’s almost surprised that he’s leaking precum at all, that it has a suspicious similarity to the sap from the wishing tree. Following that thought, he licks the smear from his tongue and grimaces at the bitterness which is all the more unpleasant after the sweetness of the tree. He returns to his predictable but reliable pulling, gathering any of the scant precum into his hand to try and smooth the glide.

He continues this way for a minute before he becomes frustrated. He tries to rub under the head of his dick, presses the slit, even involves his second hand to grope his testicles for added stimulation but he only becomes more aroused, his hand begins to move smoothly with the aid of his sweating palms and leaking dick. He groans, bends over himself to pick up the pace, hoping it will speed the process but the roughness becomes pain and he finds even less satisfaction in that.

He curses, glares at the table with the damn journal and the damn drawing. He bites his lip and forces himself to breathe, tension can make orgasm difficult to achieve. So he breathes, tries to shoo away his irritation. He slowly opens his eyes to stare at the ceiling, wood beams crossing wood planks. Ford had never noticed just how much wood he was surrounded with, in the cabin, in the forest. He sighs at the thought of the forest, his refuge, a place he felt safe and accepted--normal, even. He thinks, of course, of the wishing tree, focuses in what it was about that interaction that was so stimulating. 

Hard and prickly, he recalls. It might have been a brain flooded with endorphins or some sex hormone but he recalls the vague elation of the sensations. He tries to imagine hard and prickly and beside wood and needles and splinters, he recalls the sensation of his unshaved face after finals; the rough, sharp bristles that itched. He rubs the back of his hand over his face but he shaved yesterday so he can only imagine what it would feel like to have something like that--unshaven bristles over a hard jaw--rubbing against his skin. He did, also, enjoy the roughness of the bark, he slowly, hesitantly imagined hard, rough hands with the trees warmth.

Ford almost jumps when he feels a pulse in his dick, an enthusiastic twitch to accompany this agreeable fantasy he is constructing.

In Ford’s mind, a stubbled jaw is against his neck as broad, worker’s hands replace his: one on his dick and the other cradling his testicle, the callouses catching on the velvety skin. Ford chews his lip as the large hands move, as he imagines the jaw press and scrapes up and against his face.

“That’s it,” a voice as rough as bark sighs. “There it is.” Ford doesn’t know what “it” is, only that the fabricated stranger must have found it because he stutters in his fantasy, tries to smother a gasp and interrupts his breathing. The part of his mind that is physical is screaming at him to focus on this fantasy; so he imagines what a teasing brush behind his testicles might feel like, presses there and moans as the thick hands continue and the rough jaw works against his neck. “Good,” the voice growls affectionately and Ford shudders, rolls his neck back to let the strong jaw move to his collarbone, dragging agonizingly against his tender neck. The hand on his dick strokes him with a slower but firm grasp while the other pays close attention to kneed and tug and roll his balls. “Like that,” the voice says and presses back and nearly into Ford’s anus. He jumps, body leaving the seat of the wooden chair. “Next time,” it says though something about that makes a part of Ford tense. Still, the hands continue to massage and pull until Ford’s hips are twitching to thrust into the stranger’s hands--his hands--and he’s near gnawed through his lip. 

When Ford ejaculates for the second time that day his gasp is a muted inhale as his body tenses as one and releases. His heart is still skipping and his breathing is irregular, he focuses in the hazy afterglow on those until he feels less like scattered pieces of sentience and a collective human being.

It’s then, once his breathing has slowed and quieted and he wipes away his ejaculate with his towel, that he hears a steady ting-ting in the kitchen. He looks around the table to see if he has upset anything during his actions but there is nothing out of place, only the pen leaking minute droplets onto the journal pages. Instead, the noise seems to come from the window. Ford has a moment to recall the famous poem about a bird in the window. He wraps the soiled towel around himself and cautiously makes his way to the window, growing more and more unnerved until he locates the sound as coming from the coffee mug he had placed there earlier. He relaxes, sure that the dying cone has done something unusual and worth recording if harmless. 

Ford doesn’t grab the mug as is his first instinct--not after the last time. Instead, he peeks carefully over the edge and blinks a few moments to process what he sees--to ensure that the image will not swipe away like a slideshow. When nothing changes Ford’s eyes widen in shock and he shouts.

The pine cone has shed numerous of its scales to reveal a small, soft human face, not like the rock with a face but an actual head that blinks up at him with wide, brown eyes under furrowed brows as it frowns up at Ford. It squints before smiling broadly and shaking vigorously, clacking into the side of the mug with excitement.

“Ah,” Ford starts. The cone stops to stare at him again and then renews its thrashing. “Are you,” Ford shakes his head, shakes away the surprise. “Fascinating.” He brings his face down, adjusts his glasses to get a closer look. 

Upon inspection, the small face has a striking resemblance to himself as a teenager, though it is rounder and its brown hair is short and seems to be slicked back with what could be sap. The thing wriggles happily as he gets closer, or Ford assumes its happy. Judging from the wide grin and rapid blinking. 

“A pine cone with a human head. Are you sentient?” Ford asks before carefully reaching into the mug, unsure exactly what he's going to do. The head doesn't say anything, just stares at Ford's finger as it advances. “I'm taking you out of the mug if you'll hold still and won't roll away,” Ford says and finds that he has to tilt the mug and to the pine cone into his hand. It doesn't make any noise but it's it's small head shakes rapidly.

The face is dazed when it comes to a stop on Ford's palm. Ford bring his hand up to his face in time to see the small face resolve into a scowl which it directs at Ford. Ford can't help but huff in amusement at the expression, ridiculous on such a soft, juvenile face that is so small.

“Apologies,” Ford says and takes a seat at the table again. He places the pine cone on the table, props it against a stack of books so that it is facing him. The small cheeks of the pine cone’s face are red with a flush and Ford wonders if that means that the creature has blood like a mammal; if the anatomy of this creature mimics the wishing tree’s. “Now,” Ford picks up his pen and turns to a new page in his journal. “What are you?”

The pine cone is a little unnerving, a human head that disappears into the body of the cone. It reminds Ford a little of a baby bird only just breaking the surface of its egg, head peeking out from the hole to observe the world. The pine cone is looking around at the various paraphernalia at the table. It lingers on the bagged leaf needles and the scale of bark, face considering before its eyes wonder on. Ford takes advantage of the cone’s distraction to begins sketching it again. 

The scales at the base of the pine cone are still tight and green, slowly growing darker and drier until the scales at the top have completely opened and shed to reveal the curious face that still examines its surroundings. The face itself, as Ford noted before, has some striking similarities to himself were he younger; the same suggestion of a hard, square jaw, the same warm, brown eyes twinkling with open curiosity, and the large Pines’ nose. These similarities would not be so strange if the wishing tree had somehow replicated Ford physically via the genetic material Ford had ejaculated into it. However, there are differences between this small replicant and Ford’s own youthful face. This face is soft, cheeks rounded with baby fat and flushed with a subtle pinkness, softening a jaw that meets in a cleftless chin. The hair is shorter than Ford ever kept his own, slicked back and shiny with what could be latent tree sap though a few strands have escaped, to stick to the creature’s forehead.

Ford jumps when he realizes that as he has been staring at the pine cone; the pine cone has been staring back just as intensely. Ford shakes himself and clears his throat. 

“Well,” he begins but stops when the pine cone abruptly falls over and begins to roll toward him. “Uh.” The pine cone hits the open journal and stops before rolling back a centimeter and rolling forward again. It bounces back when it his the edge of the book again and rolls back even further. Ford looks at it, the fierce determination on the thing’s face as it squints at the obstacle in its path before rolling furiously back toward Ford, picking up impressive speed before it rebounds hard and skids back into the stack of books. Ford frowns as the thing wobbles in defeat. He carefully picks it up and cradles it in his hands. 

The thing blinks rapidly before focusing on Ford’s face. The expression of near smitten delight on the creature’s face makes Ford’s heart skip a beat to be on the receiving end. 

“What am I going to do with you?” Ford asks aloud. The pine cone blinks at him.


End file.
